10 Tactics and Tips to Take Your Email Marketing Program to the Next Level

10 Tactics and Tips
to Take Your Email
Marketing Program
to the Next Level
Brought to you by eM+C, a Target Marketing Group Publication
www.emarketingandcommerce.com10 Tactics and Tips to Take Your
Email Marketing Program to the Next Level
By consistently producing the highest return on investment of any marketing vehicle, it's easy to see why email is a part of most every marketer's toolbox. Overflowing consumer in-boxes attest to that fact. But quantity doesn't necessarily mean quality. With more demands upon consumers' time and dollars than ever, email marketing messages are frequently discarded without a second thought.
The challenge then is having your email messages stand out among the clutter. That encompasses a number of factors, including getting your message delivered. After that, catchy subject lines, relevant content, enticing offers, eye-catching creative and more determine whether your message connects with consumers. To help marketers optimize their email marketing programs, here's a list of best practices to follow:
1. Segment your email messages based on customer behavior to achieve higher email deliverability rates. A recent report from the research firm Aberdeen Group found that email marketers who followed this best practice enjoyed an average deliverability rate of 90.2 percent, a 9 percent year-over-year improvement in deliverability compared to industry average performers.
2. Prepare your email campaigns for internet service providers' (ISPs) increasing focus on user engagement metrics. As opposed to the traditional clickthrough, open and conversion rates ISPs track, recent reports suggest they'll be looking more closely at how engaged consumers are with emails they receive. As a result, email marketers should focus their energy into improving new metrics such as the "not spam" rate and the rate of mailing to inactive accounts. Improve content relevancy and clean up mailing practices rather than increasing email volume.
To maintain a high deliverability rate, email marketers must remain in CAN-SPAM compliance. This involves taking the following actions:
. D ON'T use false or misleading headers. The email's "To" and "From" lines must accurately identify who sent the email. . D ON'T use deceptive subject lines. This could mislead readers about the content of the message. . D O provide a return address that permits the recipient to request that no further emails are sent to their email address, and honor that request. You must be able to process opt-out requests up to 30 days after the original email and be acted upon within 10 working days of receipt. . DO ensure that your messages include a valid postal address.. D ON'T generate email addresses by combining multiple permutations of names, letters or numbers. . DON'T harvest email addresses. . DON'T take advantage of open relays or proxies without permission. . DON'T use scripts to register for multiple email accounts for commercial email purposes.
2. DON'T send commercial email through another computer without permission. . DON'T use a computer to retransmit messages and mislead a recipient or internet access service about the origin of the email. . DON'T use false information to register for multiple email accounts or domain names.
3. Establish an A/B subject line testing system. The only way to know if techniques such as personalizing subject lines; using all caps; promoting offers, sales and discounts; using short or long subject lines; ask a question of the recipient; etc. work for your business is to test them regularly. It's now routine for email service providers (ESPs) to offer a testing component to their platforms.
4. Test formatting and delivery across multiple email clients. There are dozens of email clients (e.g., Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, Lotus, Entourage, Applemail, Thunderbird, etc.) and webmail services (e.g., AOL, Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.), and each renders emails slightly different. Prepare your emails to be relevant and coherent to recipients even if images aren't rendered properly. Keep in mind, most ESPs default setting is to have images turned off.
Text in the body of emails and bad subject lines e.g., words like "test" and "sales"; exclamation points can cause mail servers to block emails. Test to ensure your email isn't getting caught in a spam filter.
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